No ‘Sharia Law Bill’ Before Reps – Spokesman

The House of Representatives on Thursday clarified that it has not passed any Shariah law bill. This is reaction to some media reports that the House had surreptitiously passed the bill into law.

This is as President of Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN), Rev. Dachollom Datiri, warned the National Assembly against passing a bill to legalise Sharia into law to avoid religious war in the country.

The House spokesman, Abdulrazak Namdas (APC, Adamawa), however, said nothing of such was being considered.

Namdas told correspondents in Abuja that what is before the House is a bill that seeks to amend the criminal aspect of the Shariah law by first amending the constitution, which was referred to the constitution amendment committee.

“I want to make a clarification on Shariah law. We don’t have any bill in the House called Shariah Law bill. What we have is that somebody made a proposal to amend the constitution to further allow an amendment of the criminal aspect of the Shariah Law, which was referred to the special ad-hoc committee to amend the constitution.

“The bill seeks to amend certain parts of the Shariah legal system. But if the committee decides that the bill isn’t worth it, it ends there. But even if it gets back to the floor of the House, we’ll have to discuss it.

“So, no such bill was passed by the House. We should be guided please. It’s wrong to say we have done something that we haven’t done,” Namdas said.